Planning Democracy

Econtalk's Podcast this week with Christopher Coyne was particularly interesting. Coyne, an Austrian economist, gives an economic view of the inherent problems of using foreign intervention to build a liberal democracy. He makes the important point that it really isn't that difficult to create a democracy - all you need is elections. Iran, Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela are all democracies. What is great about Western Civilization is not democracy but the liberal institutions like the free market economy, freedom of speech, a functioning free press, and the rule of law. These, of course, take a very long time to build, and are near impossible to impose through military intervention.

Japan and Germany both had much of the foundation for liberal democracy and when their respective illiberal regimes were removed, liberals were the obvious group to take over. Iraq certainly doesn't have the institutions. It has a society splintered along various ethnic and religious groups, with poisoned relations between each other. Coyne points out some mistakes the occupiers made in Iraq, but it's unlikely that even without these mistakes a liberal democracy could be established.

Yet, I'm not certain that military intervention cannot be beneficial to a society and help establish liberal democracy even in a developing nation. Japan and Germany are bad examples because of their wealth and level of human capital in 1945. But, what about Korea? U.S. intervention stopped a takeover from the Stalinist North, which would have been a tragedy. South Korea had no history of democracy before World War II, and was underdeveloped economically. As an occupoier, the United States created a democracy and imposed it's favored leaders. Korea's politics have had some bumps, but it has developed into one of the most stable liberal democracies in Asia, with Japan. Likewise, it's standard of living would now qualify it as a developed nation.

Certainly ethnic homogeneity and the outside threat of communism were benefits for stability and development as they were for Germany and Japan. But, this still indicates to me that an international coalition may be able to further liberalism in a country through intervention. Unfortunately, Iraq appears to have too many complications for foreign intervention to improve things. Hopefully, the Iraq of 2040 will prove us wrong.